Our Captain, Who Wanted Two
Of Moderate Size For The Trade Among The Islands At Aru,
Immediately Began Bargaining For
Them, and in a short tine had
arranged the nuns number of brass guns, gongs, sarongs,
handkerchiefs, axes, white plates,
Tobacco, and arrack, which he
was to give for a hair which could be got ready in four days. We
then went to the village, which consisted only of three or four
huts, situated immediately above the beach on an irregular rocky
piece of ground overshadowed with cocoa-nuts, palms, bananas, and
other fruit trees. The houses were very rude, black, and half
rotten, raised a few feet on posts with low sides of bamboo or
planks, and high thatched roofs. They had small doors and no
windows, an opening under the projecting gables letting the smoke
out and a little light in. The floors were of strips of bamboo,
thin, slippery, and elastic, and so weak that my feet were in
danger of plunging through at every step. Native boxes of
pandanus-leaves and slabs of palm pith, very neatly constructed,
mats of the same, jars and cooking pots of native pottery, and a
few European plates and basins, were the whole furniture, and the
interior was throughout dark and smoke-blackened, and dismal in
the extreme.
Accompanied by Ali and Baderoon, I now attempted to make some
explorations, and we were followed by a train of boys eager to
see what we were going to do. The most trodden path from the
beach led us into a shady hollow, where the trees were of immense
height and the undergrowth scanty. From the summits of these
trees came at intervals a deep booming sound, which at first
puzzled us, but which we soon found to proceed from some large
pigeons. My boys shot at them, and after one or two misses,
brought one down. It was a magnificent bird twenty inches long,
of a bluish white colour, with the back wings and tail intense
metallic green, with golden, blue, and violet reflexions, the
feet coral red, and the eyes golden yellow. It is a rare species,
which I have named Carpophaga concinna, and is found only in a
few small islands, where, however, it abounds. It is the same
species which in the island of Banda is called the nutmeg-pigeon,
from its habit of devouring the fruits, the seed or nutmeg being
thrown up entire and uninjured. Though these pigeons have a
narrow beak, yet their jaws and throat are so extensible that
they can swallow fruits of very large size. I had before shot a
species much smaller than this one, which had a number of hard
globular palm-fruits in its crop, each more than an inch in
diameter.
A little further the path divided into two, one leading along the
beach, and across mangrove and sago swamps the other rising to
cultivated grounds. We therefore returned, and taking a fresh
departure from the village, endeavoured to ascend the hills and
penetrate into the interior.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 84 of 213
Words from 43421 to 43929
of 111511
